qualities to render soldiers the most amiable of
men; and nothing is more delightful to contemplate than an old military
veteran, whose tenderness of heart has survived the shocks of the rough
work it has been tried in, till twenty miserable sights of war and
horror start up to the imagination as a set-off against its
attractiveness. But, publicly speaking, the more a soldier succeeds, the
more he looks upon soldiership as something superior to all other kinds
of ascendancy, and qualified to dispense with them. He always ends in
considering the flower of the art of government as consisting in issuing
"orders," and that of popular duty as comprised in "obedience." Cities
with him are barracks, and the nation a conquered country. He is at best
but a pioneer of civilization. When he undertakes to be the civilizer
himself, he makes mistakes that betray him to others, even supposing
him self-deceived. Napoleon, though he was the accidental instrument of
a popular re-action, was one of the educated tools of the system that
provoked it,--an officer brought up at a Royal Military College; and in
spite of his boasted legislation and his real genius, such he ever
remained. He did as much for his own aggrandizement as he could, and no
more for the world than he thought compatible with it. The same military
genius which made him as great as he was, stopped him short of a greater
greatness; because, quick and imposing as he was in acting the part of a
civil ruler, he was in reality a soldier and nothing else, and by the
excess of the soldier's propensity (aggrandizement by force), he
over-toppled himself, and fell to pieces. Soldiership appears to have
narrowed or hardened the public spirit of every man who has spent the
chief part of his life in it, who has died at an age which gives final
proofs of its tendency, and whose history is thoroughly known. We all
know what Cromwell did to an honest parliament. Marlborough ended in
being a miser and the tool of his wife. Even good-natured, heroic Nelson
condescended to become an executioner at Naples. Frederick did much for
Prussia, as a power; but what became of her as a people, or power
either, before the popular power of France? Even Washington seemed not
to comprehend those who thought that negro-slaves ought to be freed.

In the name of common sense then, what do we want with a soldier who was
born and bred in circumstances the most arbitrary; who never advocated a
liberal measure a